Comparative study of plasma and ion-beam treatment to reduce the oxygen vacancies in TiO2 and recombination reactions in dye-sensitized solar cells

Surface modification and retardation of back reaction by nitrogen ion-beam treatment in dye-sensitized solar cells

“…It is evident that the pristine TiO 2 film having agglomerated particles can retard the effective dye adsorption on TiO 2 film. Nitrogen ionbeam irradiation at 1000 and 1250 eV under the ion fluence of 2.13×10 17 and 0.37×10 17 ions/ cm 2 were sufficient to break the agglomerated TiO 2 particles which provide a relatively porous surface, consistent with the previous results[6]. It could be suggested that under the above ion-beam conditions, the critical number of ions having adequate ion-energy could result in the effective morphological changes by removing the organic impurities with increased porosity for better dye penetration inside the bulk of the film.…”

“…Plasma and ion-beam techniques were considered to be effectual surface modification methods to tailor the physical and chemical properties of metal oxide surface. The oxygen ion-beam and plasma treatment were reported to enhance the DSSC performance [6,7]. Nitrogen plasma and ion-beam modified TiO 2 films were mostly applied to investigate the photooxidation, photocatalytic conversion and photoreduction in different applications [8,9].…”

Eco-Friendly Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Based on Water-Electrolytes and Chlorophyll

“…It was reported that the plasma treatment of TiO 2 could enhance hydrophilicity [ 21 , 22 ], surface roughness and reactivity [ 23 , 24 ], and the reduction of oxygen vacancies [ 22 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. We hypothesized that these factors would improve the dye adsorption onto TiO 2 and the affinity of an interface of TiO 2 and the water-based electrolyte.…”

Heterostructured g-C3N4/Ag/TiO2 nanocomposites for enhancing the photoelectric conversion efficiency of spiro-OMeTAD-based solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells

“…When compared with pure TiO 2 particles, the CT-5 composites showed an additional absorption in the 360-370 nm region and the absorption edge occurred at a wavelength of about 410 nm, which might be due to the existence of g-C 3 N 4 on the surface of the TiO 2 particles. 34 g-C 3 N 4 /Ag/TiO 2 composites showed prominent visible-light absorption, which might be attributed to the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of the loading Ag, further conrming the formation of Ag nanoparticles. 35 The band gap energies of semiconductors were estimated by the Kubelka-Munk transformation, ahn ¼ A(hn À E g ) 1/2 , where a represents the absorption coefficient, n is the light frequency, E g is the band gap energy, A is a constant and n depends on the characteristics of the transition in a semiconductor.…”